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General discussion

Frozen Throne runs slowly on Vista Home Premium

Jun 12, 2007 7:12PM PDT

Hi cnet users out there, I am wondering if anyone experiences lousy performance on Windows Vista Home Premium. Below are my specs:

Basic Specs
Processor: AMD Athlon(tm) 64 X2 (2 CPUs), ~1.7GHz
2GB RAM (technically only 1.93GB)
Windows Vista Home Premium

Detailed GFX specs:
Card name: NVIDIA GeForce Go 6150
Manufacturer: NVIDIA
Chip type: GeForce Go 6150
DAC type: Integrated RAMDAC
Display Memory: 333 MB
Dedicated Memory: 61 MB
Shared Memory: 271 MB
Current Mode: 1280 x 800 (32 bit) (60Hz)
Monitor: Generic PnP Monitor

My specs are exactly the same as one of my friend's, but he is running Windows XP and has less RAM and exact same GFX card as mine. However, he runs the game smoothly.

Is it because of Vista? I have tried reducing Warcraft III: Frozen Throne graphics details and stuff, but the game still runs as slowly. For instance, the cursor lags and things arent running as smoothly as they do on my friend's XP computer.

What can I do to speed up the performance? (without changing OS) Thanks in advance for any tips.

Discussion is locked

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Most likely Vista
Jun 13, 2007 2:36AM PDT

The new "Aero" interface that makes all those little special effects possible also sucks up a lot of video RAM and video processing power. Something you don't have a lot of to spare on a laptop.

You have three choices as I see it:

1: Go back to using XP
2: Try to disable Aero, hope that's enough, though that's about the only reason to have Vista in the first place
3: Add more total RAM, so you can dedicate more to your video chipset and hope that works

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Is this a laptop?
Jun 13, 2007 2:59AM PDT

"Chip type: GeForce Go 6150"

That's it. You need to get out of the basement on the video system.

Bob

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Yes it is a laptop
Jun 15, 2007 1:52PM PDT

Yeah this is the specs of my laptop. But is it possible to change the graphics card by yourself without screwing up the computer? I only know it is possible to change RAM without doing any harm.

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Back to XP?
Jun 15, 2007 1:57PM PDT

Downgrading would probably take too much time. I would choose to stick to Vista because I sort of like the graphics =)

"Add more total RAM"
I thought 2GB is already the max. But I think my video RAM totally sucks. Only about 66MB I think.

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Usually not
Jun 16, 2007 12:51AM PDT

Some laptops have mini-PCI video cards that can be replaced, the majority simply have the GPU soldered directly to the motherboard.

If you don't want to go back to XP, then you're just going to have to learn to live with the poor performance of Frozen Throne, and any game equally or more demanding of graphics power. It's all a matter of how much you want to play the game, which apparently isn't enough to revert back to XP.

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Thanks
Jun 19, 2007 2:09PM PDT

Thanks a lot. Well just a last question for you:

Will playing on battery at full performance and playing on power source make a difference in the speed of the game?

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Possibly
Jun 19, 2007 3:02PM PDT

Not all laptop CPUs will clock themselves down when running on battery power, but many will. Even still, in your case, looking at your CPU specs, you should have more than enough power to run Frozen Throne, even on battery power. The problem for you is Vista is sapping most of your limited video processing power.

You can run around looking for other possibilities all you want, it's your time to waste, but it will always come back to the video chipset being the bottleneck. Since you can change this bit of hardware in a laptop most of the time, you're only options are to either live with things as they are, or try to reduce the ambient load on the GPU. That would involve switching off Vista's Aero UI elements, at least when you want to play a game.